Semiconductor devices are used in a variety of electronic applications, such as personal computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other electronic equipment, as examples. Semiconductor devices are typically fabricated by sequentially depositing insulating or dielectric layers, conductive layers, and semiconductive layers of material over a semiconductor substrate, and patterning the various material layers using lithography to form circuit components and elements thereon.
The semiconductor industry continues to improve the integration density of various electronic components (e.g., transistors, diodes, resistors, capacitors, etc.) by continual reductions in minimum feature size, which allow more components to be integrated into a given area.
In particular, as designs shrink, conductive features connecting to layers above and below may become shorted if the conductive feature is misaligned. Generally, this occurs when the etching process through the layer is misaligned such that the conductive feature exposes portions of an adjacent conductive feature on the layer below.